In the last year and a half or so, there has been a lot of activity regarding UI redesigns about pretty much every single area of Krita’s interface. However, most of the information ends up getting lost in the midst of all the threads.
In order to keep up with the huge amount of information, scattered throughout multiple threads, I compiled a good chunk of information into one unified document.
Krita UI Redesign Document - comments are allowed in the document, but only I have edit permissions to prevent from growing that document too much.
If there are things that I missed, please comment them. I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for different threads of this topic, but comment here on this post if there’s a new thread that I’m missing.
If you would prefer, keep suggesting new design ideas here. I’ll keep updating the document as new information comes along, so if anyone wants to build on any previous ideas, the doc serves as a nice way to catch up and iterate over the main suggestions there.
Thank you for all your hard work, and I hope to see more ideas from the community!
@slightlyangrydodo - Hi Pedro. Thanks for putting this together. The one thing I know that had a lot of discussion a while back was improving the UI for the brush editor. There is a number of discussions that happened. here are a couple that I found. The big thing before was making it detachable. With that possible in 5.0…we can probably continue on to the next requests of improving it.
I would like to repeat my suggestion from the other thread if this one is intended to serve as a hub.
Basically, it’s the ability to mark some settings as “favorite” or “pinned” and have them displayed on tab in the brush editor that serves as a control panel.
It would not only be useful for everyday use but also for people sharing brush assets. They can collect all the important parameters in one place so people downloading them don’t have to go digging in every sub-tab.
An extension of this idea that I think is very useful is being able to pin any parameter to the right-click menu. I haven’t found a way to add any arbitrary parameter to that menu. For example, if I want to use the spray engine and quickly tweak the particles size (not overall brush size) I can’t. I have to open the brush editor each time.
The biggest issue is that the old Qt theme itself that krita is using is just ugly and unprofessional. Half of it is flat (more like completely blank/featureless), while the other uses some sort of 3D effect for some buttons that has highlights on all sides and no shadows. That’s not how light works… Switching to breeze or kvantum(was it?) doesn’t help that much, since I don’t like those either. And only linux (even only KDE?) has that option anyway.
I think Krita needs to drop that and use something custom, like blender does. Blender one also looks good, even if it follows the modern flat trend (that I find lazy tbh). But if you want to know my real opinion: I think Photoshop CS6 looked the best out of any UI i can think of right now.
The Krita icons are not stellar either…
Here are specific tips:
There needs to be MORE contrast between different elements, done either with light value or with the addition of visual elements (lines and shadows)
The elements (tabs, buttons, toolbars, sliders) need to be SMALLER. I don’t press things with my feet.
The design needs to be consistent, either fully flat like blender or fully 3D like PS CS6.
Different icons that don’t have jagged edges or artifacts, perhaps add subtle gradients for a more professional look.
This would only add about 5 to 10 years of additional development time, especially since it has to be cross platform. Assuming generous funding, of course.
